I do see our being that sort of coordinated negotiating arm. At the same time, it's imperfect. We're not the Americans. We're unlikely to offer the same level of incentives, but we must be creative. Because we do have such a large part of our economy generated by foreign affiliates, we've gotten them to come here somehow, either on their own or with the help and assistance of incentives from municipalities, cities, provinces, or the federal government. We have gotten them to come here. We're not starting form zero. This country has been very successful at attracting foreign investment. Let's not fool ourselves. I don't think we're starting anything novel here. What we are trying to do is to coordinate what already exists in fragments, and to bring some type of coordination to it, so that we can grow this foreign investment.
It's true that since 2007, foreign investments have been on the decline. I don't really care what the reason is. I do want to know how to get more foreign investment, and I want a list of all of the deals that we've lost but came close to reaching, and to ask why we lost them and whether we are able to address those things and could not have won them as Canadians.
Would we never be prepared to offer the things that were necessary to get those investments to Canada? Today, I don't know the answer, but I want to know the answer, because the best way for me to be successful is to know why I failed in the past.